Managing in the Next Society

Citation

Marcella, R. (2003), "Managing in the Next Society", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59 No. 6, pp. 736-739. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410310506358

Drucker presents in a single volume a series of essays that collectively provide a sense of his vision of the future of management on a range of levels and in a variety of contexts. They represent a set of observations on society and predictions for global commerce, competitiveness and organisational success, which draw on his extensive experience over many decades of working at the highest levels in international management. As such they present idiosyncratic and discrete personal visions, rather than a holistic view of a single transforming force; however, it is a view which is rendered convincing as a result of its essential grounding in experience and the author's acute realism and common sense. Drucker is not afraid to tell us what cannot be known, what cannot be predicted and in which areas it is misleading to suggest that the way ahead can even be guessed at. In this, his work can be distinguished from that of the archetypal management guru who is convinced that he or she has the answer to all of the world's ills and who expounds a single visionary solution. Drucker, rather, gives us his analysis of four decades of understanding of the impact of the revolution in information and communication technologies and extrapolates from that analysis what he feels are likely to be the characteristics of the “next society”. His analysis is not limited to the impact of ICTs, however, and he takes on board significant factors such as changing world demographics, with a shrinking younger population and increasing older population and workforce, the emergence of new forms of work, the continuing decline in manufacture, and the growth in significance of the knowledge worker in society. The result of such factors are inevitable changes in attitude to the structure and function of management in organisations.

The essays were written over a period of five years between 1998 and 2001 and therefore represent shifts in understanding which move towards the final essay in which Drucker brings together these technological, societal, economic, political and cultural changes into an identification of the factors Chief Executive Officers must be aware of in looking ahead and positioning their organisation to exploit the new opportunities which will emerge. The one factor that Drucker acknowledges as missing from this consideration is that of the after effects of the 11 September 2001 events in America, events which he argues are already proving to be highly influential for governments and international organisations in terms of repositioning on protectionism and competition and reappraisal of opportunities and dangers. He suggests that these events have merely reinforced the sense of uncertainty prevalent in the organisational mindset, in a world characterised by global unrest. This is not a book to shrink from the major questions of the day: they are tackled directly and with honesty and common sense.

The first section of the book deals with the information or knowledge revolution that, Drucker argues, has changed and is changing commercial opportunities in ways that are not necessarily limited to the competitive exploitation of technology. “E‐commerce”, he tells us is “a totally new, totally unprecedented, totally unexpected development” that is “rapidly changing the economy, society and politics”. Although we might as information professionals argue that some of these changes have been predicted, it is certainly true, as Drucker claims, that the way in which they are being realised has been surprising and that, after the initial rhetoric and theorising, research is only now beginning to seek to measure the real impact of implementation of information and communication advances on organisational competitiveness, structure, management, strategy and working life. Equally, researchers are exploring the impact on humans of changing ways of working, communicating and interacting on the individual, group and community levels. Drucker is, to an extent, still dealing in generalisations which are not proven, while researchers (see, for example, Miller and Slater, 2000) are now exploring in some depth aspects of the information society such as cultural formation in virtual communities and many are finding that the people using such systems are at this point in time largely applying technologies in finding new ways of replicating things they have always done. Where Drucker is absolutely right is in his contention that we cannot see where things may still change and that these changes may take a generation at least to become manifest. According to Drucker, we have not and cannot predict with any degree of assurance the changes that the information revolution has and is already making inevitable. They are unforseen as they are invisibly being tested and explored in practice at present in ways which will only become visible after the event. He cites as evidence the success of e‐sales of the printed book, when the prediction had been that the e‐book would inevitably replace print in short order. As a result he tells that we cannot tell what “the new industries and institutions will be”: 20 years ago no one would have predicted the emergence of the biotechnology industry and the success of fish farming. He argues that the new industries to emerge will not necessarily be related to ICTs, although it will be the existence of ICTs that has created the essential context in which they may thrive. He tells readers that in order to exploit these new opportunities, “a drastic change in the social mind‐set is required” and that this can only be achieved by recognising the contribution of knowledge to the organisation, “where performance will come to depend on running the organisation so as to attract, hold and motivate knowledge workers … by satisfying their values, and by giving them social recognition and social power” (p. 22).

The various essays tackle different aspects of the information or knowledge revolution. However, it is in his chapter on information literacy that Drucker examines most thoroughly the ways in which information is conceptualised by managers. He tells chief executive officers that they must learn to assume “information responsibility”. They must know what information they as senior managers need to do their jobs effectively and then they must rely on information experts to devise information strategies that will enable them to access and use that information effectively. He argues that organisations are being rebuilt around information with the realisation that most management levels manage nothing, that they serve only as inefficient information relays, sending information from the top or the bottom. His solution is to set the Information Manager alongside the Financial Manager at a high level in the organisation serving a role of similar, even arguably greater, significance in enabling the organisation to achieve its goals, by effective use of internal and external information. He correctly diagnoses the over‐concentration at present on the management of internal information through systems and processes and argues the need to bring the internal and external together in order to maximise value and impact in making sound business decisions. In order to achieve this level of strategic information integration in organisations, it is essential to achieve a level of information literacy in all management, where the role of information is understood, where there is a fuller awareness of how information is generated, accessed, evaluated and used. Now some of us in the information world have taken this stance for many years and much of what Drucker says will come as no revelation to us. What is significant is that Drucker is an influential management theorist, that he is talking to those in very senior management in this book, that he gives examples and illustrations that will be convincing to that audience and that he does not underestimate the need for an expert and informed information profession, recognised at an appropriate organisational level.

Those of us involved in the information and library world should therefore welcome this book. I would recommend it most highly to information professionals, researchers and students, for although they may not learn anything very new about information from its contents, it will be revealing in suggesting how these arguments can best be made to organisational management and in understanding how information is conceptualised by managers. I would also seek to ensure that it becomes required reading by organisational management and students of business.

Elegantly written and immensely readable, the book would appeal to a wide readership. It is direct and easily understood, avoiding the tendency to cloud complex issues in incomprehensible jargon. However, it also has almost none of the trappings that one would traditionally expect in a work that one would recommend to students, in that there are no references to other writers, theorists and commentators, indeed little sense that the author is in fact aware of others with a view on the subjects with which he deals. This is potentially the greatest failing of the book and one which reinforces the sense that this is an idiosyncratic and anecdotal version of one man's vision, however interesting and influential that vision may be.